International Student Enrollment Trends from 2008-2014: Country Case Studies and Comparison to a Midwest Liberal Arts Institution

Abstract

The international student recruitment and overall cross-border education have constantly been evolving. In the past two decades, higher education institutions were developing and implementing their plan of campus internationalization. Various universities and colleges have different approaches to the internationalization. However, through the implementation of the process, most of the institutions realized that the cornerstone of the internationalization is the international student recruitment. Despite providing the financial health to the institutions and overall to the process of internationalization, international student recruitment is the provider of the campus multiculturalism and diversity. This research is concentrated on the external factors of the cross-border education and overall trends of the student recruitment at the Midsize Midwestern University. The researcher attempted to deepen understanding of the student mobility trends through the observations of the 10 sample countries and the relationship to external factors for the period of 2008 to 2014. The researcher used the following external factors: students enrolled in the United States, GDP per capita (PPP), political turmoil, and change in currency against USD, national disasters, and crime rate. The country participants were Venezuela, France, Mongolia, Canada, Brazil, Germany, China, Japan, Panama, and Spain. This study is based on the secondary data used from the publicly available databases of the Institute of International Education (IIE), The World Bank, UNESCO, OECD, SEVP, as well as the data from the Mid-size Midwestern University, for the period of 2008 to 2014. The study used quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional, descriptive design. The multiple regression analysis models identified the relationship between dependent and several independent variables. The study provides in-depth analysis of the findings, as well as provides future recommendations to the institutions.